Puttering

I puttered around today but I feel ok about it because I still got things done that I've been wanting to do anyway - and I need to learn that it is ok to just relax on a weekend. 

Yesterday after I got home I planted the rest of my bulbs - spring and fall crocuses. I look forward to seeing what I have in Spring. I know I'll have daffodils but maybe I'll have "ephemerals" and Snow Drops and Croci. There are reports of a new bunny but nothing in my garden has been eaten recently. My main concern is a squirrel digging something up so I put repellent out in hopes that it repels squirrels as well as rabbits. 

Today I planted Michael's Flowers on the deck. Purple and yellow bells. I looked for the rabbit repellent in my wood chest and found a slug. I carried it across the street and into the woods, came back, and found a dozen of them. I took a picture of them all crawling on my little trowel but I thought you'd like this tree better. 

The fun stuff was playing with pictures from Iceland. I took some panos but couldn't figure out how to stitch them. I took a LOT of HDRs. I did my first attempt at focus stack. Today I figured out a work flow to do all three which was great - except I couldn't figure out WHERE the program was sending my finished files!!! Come on!!! 

The focus stack wasn't too bad for a first attempt. I managed to make one of the panos work. 

I didn't win the lottery. Neither did my nephew. We're not stupid, we knew we have essentially no chance. That is why our family is only, collectively, $12 poorer for the attempt. 

No one won the lottery. It is now at $1.9 billion. I assume if I win that I'll get a superyacht with gold plates and try to shoot a rocket into outerspace and ... what other things do billionaires spend their money on? Oh yes! Buy social media platforms and then promptly destroy their market value. Yeah, even $1.9 B isn't enough to do that one. 

On Friday Putin called his mobilization a sparkling success. Then the humiliation began. In Kazan (a city in Russia) dozens of drafted troops berated their leadership over lack of water, lack of food, and rifles so old and in such bad shape that they were dangerous to use. Then when the military officer threatened to call riot police they started chanting a really rude name. 

In Voronezh relatives of drafted troops filmed a video to beg the governor to rescue troops. Putin annexed the parts of Ukraine and now he legally can deploy brand new draftees there because he technically made them part of Russia. Newly drafted troops are thus on the front lines. Their command left, saying they would bring the troops their things, and then never returned. It is 2022. Russian troops can call home and tell their relatives. 

Putin said Russia doesn't leave their own behind. A few hours later  Ukrainian intelligence provided an intercepted phone call of a Russian soldier in Donetsk saying troops were literally ordered to leave their own behind so Russia wouldn't have to pay their families their promised benefits. 

I read an article about Russia's demographic problem and then watched a video on the same subject. https://youtu.be/f1WFrsz4g14  Russia already had a falling birth rate and now 300,000 more men have been mobilized to fight and more than that have fled the country. Russia has the largest outflow of people since WWII. Most countries with falling birthrates compensate with immigration but who wants to go to Russia?

Putin's popularity surged in 2014 when he took Crimea. If Ukraine takes it back his standing will fall. When Ukraine takes back Crimea they will take out the Kerch bridge completely. One of the many positives of retaking Crimea is that Russia will stop oppressing the Crimean Tatars.